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The Jerk Off 2014!

Monday, 4 August 2014

With the sun still shining down in London town the last thing you want to do is a) waste time in a hot kitchen cooking or b) sit shivering in a restaurant blasting AC while you eat. Solution? Al fresco dining! The Queen of Hoxton in the East End hosted the Jerk Off 2014 in the blazing sun yesterday...but even the sun wasn't as hot as the jerk!

Situated on the gorgeous rooftop of the Queen of Hoxton, 4 restaurant/pop-ups battled it out to be crowned London's best jerker: Portobello Roads' Boom Burger vs Brixton Village Trini's Fish, Wings & Tings, White Men Can't Jerk and Mama's Jerk Station.

Sooo for a tenner plus booking fee everybody was given a scorecard with 4 'I want jerk' slips and two drinks tokens, which entitled you to two Wray and Nephew rum drinks with any mixer (there was lots of apple juice or Ting with rum in our corner). You collected your paper plate with two sides and then hit each jerk stand to sample their chicken...or in my case, I'd brought along my own portobello mushrooms as I don't eat chicken. Very resourceful I am! Each stand gave you a little coloured flag in your chicken that corresponded to their colour on the scorecard. I would have liked a choice with the sides as I ended up with rice and cous cous and friends who arrived later had coleslaw and potato salad which I would definitely have preferred.

"Will you jerk off my mushroom?" Got a good response from the guys at the jerk station I found!
Jerk sauce, jerk mayo, jerk rub....all the jerk you could hope to burn your mouth off! I mean just look at the way my mushroom is being handled...

My faves were Mama's Jerk station for flavour but they were a bit slow with the chicken for my mates, followed by Boom Burger who I gave my actual vote to. I mean jerk mayo guys! But the winner was Fish, Wings and Tings, a bit too spice for me personally, I had to drink a lot of rum to cool my mouth down. Ahem.

OG Normski presents the winners of best Jerker with champers seconds before they sprayed it all over, well, everyone.

Perfect Sunday on a sunny rooftop eating food and drinking rum. Does it get better?